"We will wipe out all of these," Erdoğan told thousands of supporters at a rally in the north-west province of Bursa.

"The international community can say this, can say that.

"I don't care at all.

"Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is."

Just hours after his speech, Turkey restricted access to the website with users being sent to a statement from Turkey's telecommunications regulator which cited four court orders as the basis for blocking the site.

Just hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared his intention to "wipe out" Twitter, the website was blocked citing four court orders as the basis for the ban
©AFP/Getty Images



These "preventive measures" against Twitter were taken in response to its defiance of court rulings, Erdoğan's office of public diplomacy said in a statement.

"Twitter has been used as a means to carry out systematic character assassinations by circulating illegally acquired recordings, fake and fabricated records of wiretapping."

The move seemed to backfire on the Prime Minister when, despite the ban, people in Turkey sent millions of tweets across the weekend leading the hashtag, #TwitterisblockedinTurkey, to start trending across the world.

Latest measures put in place by the Government have seen the Google Domain Name System (DNS) blocked, a tool used by many in Turkey to circumvent the ban.

Turkish citizens began using alternative DNS services to access Twitter, the numbers of which they posted across the country ©Instagram



Despite this measure, which will make it much more difficult for citizens to access twitter, insidethegames understands that organisers of the SportAccord International Convention are investigating the possibility of setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) at the venue.

VPN apps are already being used by many in the country to get around the censorship.

The services replace an Internet user's IP address with an address from their own servers, which masks the user's location and lets them access restricted sites.

Setting up a VPN at the SportAccord International Convention would, therefore, work in the same way, giving users a separate IP address which would allow them access to restricted sites such as twitter.

A statement from Nis Hatt, managing director at the SportAccord International Convection made no reference to this method but he remained positive that the event would be a success "regardless of what the state of play is" in the country when the Convention gets underway on April 6.

"We are monitoring the situation regarding Twitter in Turkey on an ongoing basis," the statement said.

"We expect to be able to hold a very successful event regardless of what the state of play is by the time SportAccord Convention takes place in Belek."

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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